In my rundown of the bills pending before the legislature related to employment, I came across SB 737. I am going to find out more in the coming days, but I just thought I’d post this in light on Monday’s ruling in Murphy. In the past, bills like this that are “empty shells” have been used to draft legislation after the cutoff for certain steps in the legislative process. Perhaps this bill was waiting on Murphy….

Existing law authorizes the Industrial Welfare Commission to adopt or amend working condition orders with respect to break periods, meal periods, and days of rest for any workers in this state consistent with the health and welfare of those workers. Other provisions of existing law prohibits an employer, except as provided, from employing an employee for more than 5 hours per day without providing the employee a meal period of not less than 30 minutes, or from employing an employee for more than 10 hours per day without providing the employee with a 2nd meal period of not less than 30 minutes.

This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to address issues related to meal periods and rest periods in employment.

UPDATE: I just spoke with a staffer of Senator Calderon, who introduced this bill. I asked whether it was proposed in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Murphy case. The response was that this was a “spot bill” (his term for the shell I mentioned above) that would end up being used as a vehicle for a compromise between employee and employer groups on rest breaks and meal periods. When asked whether the statute of limitations was part of this, the staffer responded that there were a “multitude” of different issues being negotiated.

I will be paying special attention to all of the developments related to SB 737.

More to follow…

UPDATE 1: 7-0. Not many people saw that coming, even if you got the result right. I was way off. I guess I’ll go back to predicting sports outcomes.

UPDATE 2: Essentially, the overtime premium analogy argument won the court over. It was a good argument. I had thought that the use of the term “pay” instead of “wage” was a hook, but I fully recognized that the definition in LC 200 left it open. I’m surprised by this result not because it’s “wrongly decided,” but because I had different estimations of the leanings of some of the justices. The decision was 7-0 and we’re not going to see a bill changing this anytime soon. This is the law now.